I have been having some issues on my Dillon 550 where I sometimes have to exert significant force to get a 9mm case "unstuck" from the belling/powder dump station. Sometimes, it's enough to eject the primer from its cup on the way back on that station. Yesterday, I decided to do some test loads of 147gr GDHP with CFE pistol. grabbed my bag of 9mm brass, and sorted out 15 that had the same headstamp. MON was the first I got 15 of.

Using the 550 in "single stage press mode", every single case needed a bear effort to get off of the expander. Sometime, I had to hit the lever hard with my palm to get it unstuck. I pulled off the powder measure, pulled out the expander, and polished it with some scotch brite - it didn't help. After that fiasco, I grabbed a few more non-MON cases, and they released from the expander with relatively little effort. I dug out a few more MON cases, and same thing: Extreme difficulty. The weird thing is that the MON cases were tumbled with SS pins, so the inside was still "dirty", and other headstamps that I tumbled with pins were squeaky clean and didn't stick.

I pulled out 5 MON and 5 S&B cases and measured them. There was no real deviation between the brands after running them through the sizing die. 0.371-0.372" outside diameter when measured 1/16th down from the case mouth, and wall thickness of 0.012".

Has anyone experienced "sticky" brass like this before? I think I'm just going to cull out the MON cases to save myself some trouble, although I can't tell why they would be sticky.

Sometimes I wet tumble, sometimes I don't. I never use wash&wax, only Dawn and a bit of Lemishine.

Maybe I'll go back and check the case length - don't know why I didn't think to measure that.

Couple of questions.

Using a Dillon powder funnel?

Is Monarch brass stepped inside?

Primers should never fall out unless they are being decapped. Sounds like your primer pockets have enlarged if some banging make them fall out.

I use an aftermarket powder funnel with all my straight case pistol set ups in a SDB that preforms the same as a Lyman M die, and always wet tumble my cases.

I do get a little sticking, but it isn't enough to bother me.

If cases are dry tumbled for 15 minutes in plain corn cob they come out slightly dusty.

This dust acts as lube and allows powder funnel to release smoothly. Helps a lot.

So to summarize, sounds like bad cases to me, or need some "dry tumble dust" for lube.

I don't see the Monarch brass as looking different (stepped) inside. This is using the powder funnel that comes with the 550.

I went ahead and culled out all the MON brass (I think there were only 20-30). It's still weird that there isn't anything that sets this brass apart from others that I measured. I grabbed 5 more and measured the length - they were all about the same as everything else I compared them to. Pretty much the only thing left as an explanation is that the brass alloy is slightly different that makes it "stick" more to the expander. Maybe I'll try one last experiment and scrub the inside of the cases with a bronze brush to see if has an effect as I still have the cases in a little baggie for further experiments.

They're not. I have other cases that were tumbled with SS media that were perfectly shiny inside and expanded with no issues. The Monarch brass was not shiny inside.

I'll take some pictures in the morning and post 'em up.

Do the magnet test to see if they are steel.

I had some brass coated steel 9mm cases years ago that when wet tumbled the brass plating came off in places and gave the steel away.

If not steel, I will go with your different alloy theory. I would put them in the crap bucket in any case.

I've had this experience as well, and my solution was lubing all cases for all calibers.

I wasn't a believer of using lube on 9mm until I had galling on both my sizing die and brass sticking on the dillon powder die. Lube fixed both issues.

I do wet tumble and my brass was too clean.

I use the spray alcohol lanolin recipe from ultimate reloader.

One side effect is potentially powder clumping in the case from lube, but so far I haven't seen a real problem with that at the range.

Took some pictures. MON on the left, random grab of 5 cases from my mixed stash.






Inside the case mouth. Notice the random batch on the right has some very shiny insides when I tumbled with SS media. The MON cases are clean, but duller inside.

As mentioned in my OP: I already used Scotchbrite to clean the funnel, and I also mentioned that squeaky-clean cases (like the S&B brass) do just fine, yet the slight-dirtier MON get stuck.

Forgot to mention: The MON cases are NOT magnetic.